After dealing with the Sentinel and the Web Weavers, the second wave went just as smoothly as the first one. Unlike during Hazel’s first encounter with the sentinels, only one of them made an appearance. However, that meant that Astrid and the others dealt with their own sentinels at their checkpoints, like Hazel.

  None of the Web Weavers showed up after the start of the second wave. That likely meant that only a small number could participate in the second round, like in a video game. But the third round could have more of them.

  Thankfully, Hazel and the others weren’t planning on enduring a third wave. Once the second wave was finally done with the numerous corpses scattered around the area as a sort of memento of their battle, all of the players, including Hazel and Chegyaeyi, were dead tired. The same went for the rest of the players at the other checkpoints.

  Because of this, everyone decided to leave the queen’s range before the third wave could continue. While riding the military cargo truck back to the Jetport base, Hazel went over everything that happened during the first two waves.

  While the first wave was a bit easier to handle, the second wave would’ve ended a lot differently if Hazel hadn’t used her Entropy Sickle spell to get rid of the Web Weaver webs and the Spider Sentinel itself. While she already had a plan to deal with the Sentinel, what surprised her most during the second wave were the Web Weavers.

  Because Hazel had no information regarding this spider species, she was caught off guard by their webs’ resistance to physical and magical attacks. While they were able to overcome this problem with her Entropy sickle, Hazel doubted that the others, like Astrid, had it so easy, too.

  And from what Astrid told her through the chat room...it certainly wasn't.

  [Astrid Skogr: We had to destroy parts of the bridge that those Web Weaver monsters clung to with their webs. None of our attacks could do anything to their webbing. Not even my arrows enchanted by the Kinetic bowstring did much to it.]

  [Hazel Thatcher: Yeah, it seems that only stronger attacks or spells are capable of doing some kind of damage, like my Entropy Sickle. If I didn’t have that spell in my arsenal, my group likely would’ve had to resort to what yours did.]

  [Astrid Skogr: It’s a good thing that you didn’t, since the bridge was destroyed soon after. We had to keep breaking off pieces of the interstate to keep the spiders from climbing on and attacking us. It got to the point where there’s now a giant gap within the bridge.]

  [Hazel Thatcher: It got that bad, huh? What about the sentinel?]

  [Astrid Skogr: Honestly, that thing was a lot simpler to deal with, probably because we’ve taken them down before. The Web Weavers were the most troublesome because of those damn webs of theirs. My group lost a couple of players because they couldn’t break through the webbing to escape.]

  [Hazel Thatcher: Yeah, the same thing happened to me as well. We’ll have to do something about that to prevent this from happening again. After all, we still have three or so more days of this before the Queen shows herself.]

  Despite enduring so much hell during those two waves, they still had to endure three more days of these spider swarms. And they would only get worse as time passed. The Web Weavers were just a start in the second stage. Something told Hazel that the third and fourth stages of the curse would be even more difficult to handle.

  Of course, there was also the final stage, but she couldn’t worry about that at the moment. Her main priority right now was getting stronger by using the stages to her advantage. Speaking of getting stronger, Hazel finally achieved another level up and was now Level 24. For the free points she received due to her level-up, she dumped all four into Wisdom.

  While she wanted to keep increasing both Intelligence and Wisdom, her current problem regarding her abilities was her Mana Regeneration. When she conjured multiple curse bombs before, it took a minute for her mana to replenish. It didn’t help that she recklessly made more bombs against the sentinel either. If she had produced a couple more of those during that fight, she would’ve been drained and unable to fight back against the rest of the swarm.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  So, for the next couple of level-ups, she was going to focus on her Wisdom a bit more than usual. At least until this stat reached a certain point where she could decently recover her mana fast enough to stay in the fight.

  Hazel did possess mana potions, but she wanted to only use those in case of an emergency or as a last resort. And something told her that was going to happen soon with the Spider Queen in the next couple of days.

  Aside from her level-up, a couple of her spells also improved after the battle. Curse Bomb was now rank 4, Cursed Spears was now Rank 6, and Astral Eyes had reached Rank 4. Hazel was a bit surprised by the last one, but considering how often she used this spell to observe her surroundings, this was pretty much an obvious result.

  Much like with Cursed Spears, it seemed that each rank-up increased the slot for an Astral Eye she could use. Now that it was rank 4, she could now conjure four Astral Eyes at once. Sadly, there were no extra features that came with it. Not that it bothered Hazel that much. The fact that she had two more astral eyes to use was plenty for her right now.

  Depending on how she utilized this ability other than letting her see, she could very well spy on her enemies and obtain precious information. That and she could also scour a small area with all four eyes to scope out for any nearby enemies that she could either take down or follow.

  Seeing that she had nothing else to do as they rode back to the Jetport Base, Hazel used her Storage bracelet and whipped out a book out of thin air. It was the Runecraft book that she took from the Shaman after killing it during the invasion.

  Opening the book, she calmly read the first couple of pages, seeing what exactly was so special about Runecraft. And what she discovered certainly intrigued her.

  According to the text, Runecrafting was a very versatile technique and used for many tasks from made barriers or wards to even enhancing weapons and armors. Reading further, Hazel realized that runecraft also allowed players to enhance themselves and their abilities like skills or spells through different means like magic damage or even decreasing spell cooldowns.

  There were so many applications that Runecraft could do that Hazel didn’t know where to start. While reading, she also communicated with Astrid through the Chat Room again.

  [Hazel Thatcher: Any sightings of your former friend in Portland?]

  Knowing that Dolk was still out there somewhere in her city, Hazel was curious if the bastard tried to make any contact with Astrid like before.

  [Astrid Skogr: Nothing at the moment, but you never know. My guess is that he’s watching from a distance, observing my every movement.]

  [Hazel Thatcher: That sounds very Stalker-esque. Should we be concerned about this?]

  [Astrid Skogr: Being concerned over the matter isn’t going to help us. Plus, it would be unwise to focus on Dolk when we still have to deal with Spider Queen.]

  [Hazel Thatcher: Okay, so first we deal with the Spider Queen quest, then we can look around the city to locate Dolk?]

  [Astrid Skogr: That certainly sounds like a plan.]

  Hazel smiled before mentally dismissing the chat room panel, turning her focus back on the runecraft book. As she did, her eyes locked onto a certain phrase that immediately caught her attention. She narrowed her gaze and ran her index finger along the words she saw, reading them aloud out of shock.

  “Once you’ve gained enough experience with Runecrafting, the user is even capable of...making golems?!”

  Finishing the sentence, Hazel’s eyes widened in surprise as she stumbled across a vital piece of information. Information that drew her attention in an instant.

  With this book...was she actually capable...of building an actual Golem?

  Just from this shocking revelation alone, a small, wicked grin began to form on Hazel’s face. If it wasn’t for the fact that she was currently surrounded by people, she would’ve started laughing like an evil little gremlin, but managed to hold back the urge.

  As her eyes stayed glued to the book, she felt something nudge her shoulder rather abruptly, forcing her to pull her attention away for a moment. When she did, Hazel realized that the one who nudged her was actually Chegyaeyi, who was hesitantly looking at her.

  Hazel noticed the Lizardfolk warrior’s expression and tilted her head curiously.

  “What’s up?”

  “Well...” Chegyaeyi hesitated. “It’s that smile of yours. Do you normally grin like an evil sorceress?”

  Upon hearing this, Hazel’s face fell, realizing what was happening. She immediately closed the book and sighed heavily.

  “I guess you’re going to tell me that I should work on my smile, right?”

  “I...wouldn’t be so direct about it...but yes, unfortunately.”

  Hazel let out a groan while leaning her head back in dismay. While she noticed it before, she didn’t expect someone other than Astrid to comment on her evil smile. That only told her that this little habit of hers...was a lot more severe than she realized.

  And much like how Astrid and Chegyaeyi told her, she really needed to fix this odd trait she possessed. Otherwise, she might truly be seen as some wicked Witch one way or another.